Will you allow me to make one or two criticisms on a translation, which appeared in your issue of the 19th July, of the proclamation issued by the Prefect of Tientsin, before the late riot The first sentence makes an unimportant anistake, with reference to the three characters Li-ta-yang (45 A 2f). The translater strangely makes this the name of the place to which the two kidnappers belonged, whereas it is the name of the child* whom they kidnapped. This, as I have said, is unimportant in itselZ,'and hardly worth mentioning, but it shakes one's confidence in the general accuracy of the translation.
Another mistake is, in iny opinion, the want of prominence given to the must i portant clause in the whole proclamation. namely 3 A Ohi " instructed or commissioned by others." The translation under notice simply says that " such wretches had been employed tto kidnap children, &e." This does not make proent enough the phrase in which the ief venom of the document lies. Common-rumour, at the time when this proclamation was issued, pointed to the Roman Catholics, as the instigators of the kidnappers; the proclamation, without exactly adopting the rumour, cleverly manages to fix public attention upon the Roman Catho-lies. It is to them, undoubtedly, that the Chinese applied the character A, and the writer was conscious that this would be the case, The expression read stronger in Chinese, than when translated into English, and should therefore be made promin-contin any translation. All the denunciations of the after part of the proclaination, were read as designed specially for those indicated by the A, audit is therefore. difficult to conceive how an olticial document could be more inflammatory.
In no spirit of idle carping, but in the interests of truth and justice between ourselves and the Chinese, would say that the importance cannot be overrated, at the present time, of furnishing accurate transla tions, of the authoritative documents that have been and are being issued by the Chinese, on this unhappy subject. By carelessness in translation, or by glossing over certain expressions, or by not pointing out the force of certain characters, Forvigners generally, who are ignorant of Chinese, may be misled as to the actual spirit and temper of Chinese officials; and a mistake here might be fatal. Ihave as little doubt as have of my existence, that the officials, in this city, are determined, unless pressure is brought to bear upon them, to keep up the idea among the people, that they believe that there is a foundation of truth in the popular rumours about Foreigners, although they may not be able to yet hold of any real evidence on the subject. 3 long as such a state of feeling exists, there can be no peace between us; and that it does exist, these facts shows 1. It is six weeks, to-day, since the mas-race, and yet the writer of the above proclamation has only been deprived of his office within the last 10 days, He has been—on paper—handed over to the Hing-pu, ona vague charge of general mismanagement but if report speaks truly, he is still in Tientsin, at liberty and likely to remain so. The authorities in Tientsin are said, now, to ning are spoken of as having been. seized be very busy apprehending rioters, and Chinese text here is very obscure; of the Chinese whom we have consulted, half declare in favour of the original translation: half in favour of 1 Oar correspondent refers to a truuelasion published fi the XC. Daily Nees. The word was corrected in re-Printing the translation in the ¥-c, Herald, Eo. but we all know how easy it is for the Government to find obnoxious persons to behead, at a time like this, without touching the real culprits. By their having abstained from action until within the last few days, when alittle pressure has been put upon them, one is led to fear that these nine have been selected on some such principle as thi 2. Nota single proclamation has been issued, in this neighbourhood, denouncing those who spread false rumours about foreigners, and threatening them with punishment. This has been urged, I believe, on the Tsung-li Yamen, but as yet without elect. Amid the apathy and indifference of the Northern officials (to characterize their conduct in the mildest way), it is refreshing to contrast the action of Ma-sin-yi, the Governor-General of the Two Kiang: He issued proclamations, explicitly charging the people not to listen to unfounded rumours about the Roman Catholics; he took active steps to prevent'a threatened rising, and to apprehend those who were spreading rumours; he sent the Prefect, and the district Magistrate, attended by a number of the gentry and literati, to examine the Roman Catholic establishment, and by their report, that there was no truth in the stories current, was able to allay the excitement of the people. By these and other steps, of a like vigorous and straightforward character, he prevented a riot in Nanking. It is needless to say that, had the same means been taken at Tientsin, no massacre, such as that we now deplore, would have taken place. The authorities, then, are responsible for that massacre. Had they done nothing maze than simply refrain from issuing suitable proclamations, knowing, a8 we do, what power these proclamations have among the Chinese, th would have been guilty, legally and morally, of the innocent blood shed. How much more guilty are they when, so far from refraining, they used their pens and their seals to foment the passions of the mob? Up to the present date, no honest attempt. has been made, by the Government, to undo the mischief done by these proclamations, or to issue one in the style of Ma-sin-yi 3. The edicts of the Emperor, on the subject, are vague and doubtful. "The first was decidedly bad, and tended rather to excite than to allay the suspicions of the people, with respect to foreigners. The second was a slight improvement on the first, but left plenty of room for doubt. The third I have already commented on, in my letter of last week. With respect to this last edict, I hear that the Chinese Ministers belonging to the Foreign Office are, as is perfectly natural, endeavouring to convince " their foreign friends that 2 WG Mit gif is as satisfactory a phrase could possibly have been selected; and they point to the lower clause FE HR as defining, without doubt, the meaning to be attached to 3%, Now iscither an adverb or an adjective. If it is an adverb, it must be translated " to a great extent," and the expression will stand thus—" that the talk about us is, to great extent, false, and wholly without evidence." Iam at a loss to see how this acquits us, for a thing may be wholly without evidence, and yet there may be some truth in it; and this is the exact impression conveyed to the Chinese by the use of these characters. If J is an adjective, then it refers to the noun 2 immediately preceding it, and means much, the greater part, as opposed to IP the lesser part. In that case, the meaning is substantially the same as before, that ' much of the talk about us is false, without a particle of evidence."
The whole expression, I admit, is cleverly contrived, and is evidently intended to meet the view universally held by_the Cht nese, that there is a foundation of truth the rumours, and yet to appear to foreigners as acquitting them. The Zz, it was thought, would not be observed by "our foreign friends," or if it should be observed and protested against, it could be defended, on the ground of superior knowledge of Chinese, bysucha man as Tung-sun, over that of foreigners who have perhaps not studied the Wen-li. If such' talk as this bamboozles a foreigner, I pity him. The veriest tyro in Chinese knows that Z means "much" and not "all" or "whole or "wholly," and that if the latter were hon-astly intended $4 or E¥ or #¥ would have been employed.
M.C.
Peking, August 2nd, 1870.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.